All Fall Down
by SurreptitiousFox245
Summary: The Towers had fallen. The Aether had collapsed. Mundus was forever warped. But they had been wrong. With reality branched and finding yourself displaced along the currents of Time and Existence, discovering a way out becomes less and less likely. Especially as an old enemy rises seeking revenge. Nirn may be out of your reach, but your journey has only just begun. AU/2nd person POV


**All Fall Down**

By: ZealousPhoenix245

Summary: The Towers had fallen. The Aether had collapsed. Mundus was forever warped. But they had been wrong. With reality branched and finding yourself displaced along the currents of Time and Existence, discovering a way out becomes less and less likely, especially as an old enemy rises seeking revenge. Nirn may be out of your reach, but your journey has only just begun. AU/2nd person POV/10th Walker fic

Disclaimer: I don't own Elder Scrolls, any semi-fandom, semi-canon ES lore I may use, Lord of the Rings, or any LotR lore I also may use for the duration of this story. All rights go to Bethesda, Michael Kirkbride (because, let's face it, most of the canon-questionable lore I'm gonna use is CHIM specific and that's practically all MK) and Tolkein. I only own my OC.

Quick Author's Note: Alright. I know that this is probably going to be rather confusing, but it's a prologue. It's going to be somewhat vague. And, I'm using a lot of heavy ES lore referencing (again, a lot of it's Michael Kirkbride's work which is canon-debatable. If you don't like that, don't read my story). The concepts WILL be explained, but you're going to have to bear with me a little bit. And as for the 2nd person, a friend of mine quasi-insinuated that I wouldn't be able to write a oneshot in anything but 3rd or 1st person. To prove him wrong, I started this...but it escalated.

Also, yes, this is going to be a 10th-walker fanfic, but due to the fact that I'm going to incorporate a sub-plot focusing on my OC, there will be _additions_ to the LotR plotline. It'll still follow Lord of the Rings, but I have something in mind that will parallel those happenings, if you follow me.

Anyway, enjoy! :)

* * *

**Quickly, you had learned** to hate despair. Just the word echoing through the recesses of your subconscious sent shivers running along your spine in a manner less than pleasant, and you supposed you had nothing but the jeering sportsmanship of the crowd to thank for that. Calls, cries, and whistles – all in favor of the fate you had only been condemned to hours prior nearly made you falter in your gait, but dutifully you restrained. The final moments of any life being remembered as spent in fearful weakness was something neither you, nor anyone else in the same predicament would've found appealing. And so it was that fright was an emotion you would not display. Confidence, acceptance, perchance even regret; these were acceptable. Abhorrence, dismay, anxiety, maybe _guilt_; those most certainly were not.

You thought you saw her – there! – lost in the crowd, a shock of loose charcoal hair and muggy crimson eyes set slightly more than a head shorter than the surrounding occupancy. You concluded hurriedly not a moment later that you were hallucinating, probably, when the image was replaced with the towering braided blond and shocking gilt common to the monastery's newest inhabitants. Dehydration tended to do such things, and the fever burning behind your eyes had never been more palpable against the frigid wind blustering across the icy plateau than it was in that moment.

Then again, maybe that intensity, too, was nothing more than an illusion.

Thick, meaty hands held your upper arms in painful, vice-like grips that you thought redundant, merely an act for a show of control and superiority. The wrought iron chains clinging and clanging from your wrists and ankles restricted your easy range of motion quite nicely. The shock features nullified it entirely, as the burns spider-webbing around your wrists and twinging hands evidenced. Even a fool would've been wise enough to know that escape was _impossible_, not merely _improbable_. Precaution of several armed guards was not necessary. Not in the least for the sake of practicality, and that, in turn, made it obvious that your public march was only for the grandiose purpose of instilling fear into a society too strong-willed to follow anything short of it. A statement that clearly said the new regime was not to be trifled with and their plans were not for meddling.

Its pain still shocked you out of a haze. They'd probably also drugged you, now that you could clearly process the thought that had been nagging at you for several days (or was it weeks?). Not that it mattered; lost time was the least of your concerns. You had failed. Simple, straight, and to the point, regardless of the fact that the little, three word admittance stated so plainly cut deeper than any blade. This final walk towards the lackluster, axe-wielding visage clad in black appearing only to the dead caused you to inch farther and farther away from being able to deny such a reality of the end for yourself.

And a sad, _sad_ end was it, for a sad little hero who had only wanted to drown her sad sorrows in a sad mug of ale.

The rope was around your neck now, distracting you from the pile of large, inhumanly _draconic_ bones half-buried beneath the snow. You knew a hanging was not the intent, but a thing which reminded that you were being forced to _watch_, and the bones symbolized that even the strongest were not immune to time. The shackles had been removed as you stood upon the makeshift platform. After all, why not make you see the end you'd fought so hard to prevent without obvious restraint? Make the victory seem all that much easier? Well, you knew one thing for certain – you would not let it be so simple for them.

Struggling against the rope carefully, in your feverish state, you really only managed to do little more than squirm and let out a few pathetic mewls, but it was enough. Enough to show defiance, enough to show that maybe – just _maybe_ – all was not as lost as it seemed in those last few seconds where _someone_ could yet do _something_. If all you could further yourself to be for your withering cause was a symbol of hope, a flame, then so be it. It was better than nothing at all.

"We gather this council…" the words rang from the dark robed figure ignoring the minute struggle beside him, but you barely registered them. _Council_, you couldn't help thinking snidely? You hadn't even been given a trial, not that you'd expected one. There was no fairness for traitors. No fairness for the wicked, when in truth, those who were wicked were those who wielded the power, those with the ability to make an entire society see the reality through nothing but rose colored glasses of the thickest make. The encouragement and utter buoyancy of the gathered crowd seemed to increase with each indiscernible mutter, stammer, and stutter from the one who'd spoken, your fate sealed yet farther with every syllable. It only solidified what pity for them you could yet feel.

You locked with crimson eyes again in the thick, oceanic depths of gold.

"_I'm sorry!_" you screamed at the image that wasn't there, continuing to struggle against an unexplainable _grip_, barely holding you, yet unimaginably tight, "_I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!_" Short stature and ashen skin was replaced again with soaring height and rich golden, and the phantom ceased. Barely, you registered that the pleading, while being formed from your chapped lips, did not vocalize above the roaring of the spectators. And it was then, in the chaotic finality of it all, that you realized there was no hope left. There never had been. You'd always been fated to meet an end in that moment, and perhaps that was the biggest shame of it all – to die before you really had a chance to _live_.

There was a ritual starting, but you didn't care as the force that held you pulled you deeper and deeper, away from the pain, the grief, the fear, the guilt. It was nice, but at the same time you felt like you shouldn't have been succumbing to the _acceptance_. You should've been doing something, anything. A final act so that no one could claim that you didn't at least _try._

_It wasn't your fault, though_, that entity of misery whispered, the scraggly fingers of its influence skittering and clawing its way methodically from your subconscious. _You could not control It's decision any more than you could meddle with fate._

But you had, you wanted to scream. You _had_ touched fate, molded it to your whims and uses, and, more importantly, it had let you. What made this situation any different? Why hadn't you been able to the one time it had counted the most? Where was the fairness in that, the lack of applicable blame?

You had sunk to your knees now – pride and propriety be _damned_, this was the end of the gods damned world as you knew it – and the mountain around you began to crumble, piece by frozen piece. Where there had been chanting earlier – a prayer, maybe? Though to whom you would never be able to discern – your ears were met with only awed silence, both Justiciar and spectator alike as the earth began to dissolve and the sky began to fall. Watching in terror like they'd wanted you to in the first place as you felt the pull becoming stronger only led you to ponder as an ethereal white began shining from Magnus. Slowly, it webbed along the softer spots of luminescence where the Magne-Ge would've lain had Lorkhan's halves darkened the heavens. Too obvious was the symbolism of why midday had been chosen for this act, and it wasn't lost on you that the whole situation was meant to be mystical and to make a bold, final statement. You were fading as the light spread further and further, becoming so blinding that it hurt even through the shielding of eyelids. Soon enough, that, too, faded into nothing until only the faintest wisp of consciousness remained.

You shouldn't have been fading in the first place. That was the first clue that they'd made a mistake amid all of their hubris about being perfection. Somehow, it was disturbing instead of a comfort. If _they_ were wrong, what kept your side of the coin from being wrong as well? You were delving into unknowns and what-ifs of an ilk like you had never before, and it was unsettling to what of you was left to feel. Though, childish as it was, you couldn't help but feel even the tiniest bit proudly victorious for an admittedly stupid reason.

They'd been wrong. And that somehow meant more to you than winning.

* * *

Final Words: Okay, by the "Justiciar" mention, I'm hoping that some of you have picked up that the bad guys in this scenario are the Thalmor and that I'm going to take the idea that the Thalmor are the seriously supremacist, let's-destroy-creation bad guys and run with it.

Again, if you don't understand some of my referencing, don't worry too much about it. This is a PROLOGUE. It will get explained a little further on in detail, so don't fret on it too much.

R&R!  
~ZealosuPhoenix


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